Your Key to Success in Equine Clicker Training (clickertraining.ca)

Posts tagged ‘hippologic clicker challenge’

December is a fun month to make beautiful pictures of you and your horse. There might be snow, you can put on a Santa hat or take a picture of you and your horse in front of a Christmas tree. How about teaching your horse to play Jingle Bells? So many ideas, where to start?

December pictures

A few years ago I wanted to make pictures of Kyra and me. We got it done but it took way longer than anticipated and it was quite frustrating for me. Kyra didn’t want to wear the hat and keep her ears forward, she shook her head or kept her ears to the side.

Luckily with some clicker training this was solved, but it took longer. I envisioned to walk to where we wanted to make the Christmas card pictures and get it done. I didn’t envisioned that it would take way longer than one hour before the first ‘good’ picture was taken. (I made a mental note to be prepared next time.)

This year I am prepared!

Training plan

I planned to make a cute December video of Kyra and lots of Christmas themes pictures I can use the next few years. I am currently training her to ring a bell so she can “play” “Jingle bells”, wear a wreath around her neck and hand me a Santa hat. This year I will train her so it won’t be as frustrating as last time. When the person with the camera is ready, we will be ready too!

Maybe you have the same issue making December pictures of you and your horse?

Since it’s always nicer to play with friends I want to invite you to join me in this month HippoLogic Clicker Challenge if you think this will be fun.

Imagine the first day of snow and you can immediately make the perfect December video and Christmas card pictures.

In one training session Kyra already learned to ring a hotel bell and ring Christmas bells. Take a look and get inspired!

Join me in the online HippoLogic Clicker Challenge

Join us!

If you join the HippoLogic Clicker Challenge (HCC) you get the Challenge emailed to you. I made 4 different levels so if you are a beginner or seasoned clicker trainer, you will get challenged.

I provide you with 14 days online help in our FB support group so you have accountability to get it done!

The HCC runs from December 1-14, 2018. On December 14th you can upload your final video. I am looking forward to it. There are still spots available! Sign up ends Dec 4th.

(If you’re not too busy decorating your tree and buying gifts, you can enter the one that runs from Dec 15th-Dec 30th. Send me an email hippologic@gmail.com)

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

I help horse owners get results in training they really, really want. Getting results with ease and lots of fun for both horse and human is important to me. Win-win!

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free and it comes with a gift) or visit HippoLogic’s website and join my online course Ultimate Horse Training Formula in which you learn the Key Lessons, Your Key to Success in Clicker Training.

Many horse owners and riders, me included, started out one point in time using reinforcers to train our horses. It doesn’t matter if we used positive reinforcement/clicker training for trick training or more ‘serious’ behaviours like standing for the vet and farrier or in the saddle. Not every one is successful in teaching their horse new behaviours or improve the quality of existing behaviours with positive reinforcement. How to become more efficient when using R+ is what this blog is about.

Use a bridge signal

The use of a click to bridge the time gap between the desired behaviour and the delivery of the reinforcer is tip number one when you use reinforcers in training. The horse has to know what made him earn the treat. The bridge signal is also called ‘marker’ or marker signal’ to indicate that that signal marks the desired behaviour.

Set a goal

If you know what your goal in training is, write it down and describe it as detailed as possible. When you to it right, you’ve made a great start for your shaping plan. Important is to focus on what you want, not what you don’t want. It sounds like an open door, but how many of us have yelled in despair to our horse: “I wish you didn’t always walk away when groomed.” or “I wish you stopped stepping on my toes” or “I wish you weren’t so nervous around fly spray“.

This is focusing on what you don’t want. What you focus on, you create more of!

What do you want instead? “I want my horse to stand still while being groomed”,”I want my horse to stand next to me.” and “I want my horse to be relaxed when I apply fly spray”.

PS If you want to train your horse to accept fly spray, join this month HippoLogic Clicker Challenge. Two weeks of focus, support and training tips.

Details matter

Describe your goal into as much details as you can think of.

Example: I want my horse to stand still and stay relaxed when I apply fly spray. I want my horse to be comfortable with all kinds of spray cans and their content, all kinds of sounds, smells and feels. I want my horse to be OK wherever we are, when I use a spray can or spray bottle on his body, neck, legs and tail. I want my horse to be OK with being sprayed when he is at liberty. I want my horse to be confident to walk away if he doesn’t like it or had enough.

If you go into so many details you already can see how you can approach your “spray can training“. You can use different kind of bottles later on in training: start with a plant sprayer with water before you start using aerosol cans that make a hissing sound and from which the content often is very cold. Next step is training in different places (stall, pasture) and so on.

Shaping plan

Once you have your goal set, you are ready to make a shaping plan. That’s your step-by-step approach of your training. Divide your goal into lots of smaller steps. Make each step so tiny it describes a click worthy moment.

The first step can be ‘Horse approaches spray can’, the next step can be ‘Horse targets spray can’.

Repeat each step until you see the horse is confident enough before you ask a bit more. Your horse might even increase his own criteria by skipping one of more of the steps in your plan. Don’t forget to click and reinforce when that happens!

Track your progress

Last but not least is to keep track of your process and also your progress. If you don’t make progress write down what you changed in your setup so you will remember next time you train a horse.

Keeping track is such a valuable habit. You never have to invent the wheel again! Keeping a training journal or logbook will also help you become more creative in finding new angles to training challenges.

Writing down your process will also provide you with valuable information of all the things you did well in training! Always keep it positive! That what makes a training journal a good read!

Do you set goals, write them down, make shaping plans and keep a training journal? Or do you think this is difficult?
What is your approach that helped you become more successful? Share your training tips in the comments!

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Happy Horse training!

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

I help horse owners get results in training they really, really want. Getting results with ease and lots of fun for both horse and human is important to me. Win-win!

Sign up for HippoLogic’s newsletter (it’s free and it comes with a gift) or visit HippoLogic’s website and join my online course Ultimate Horse Training Formula in which you learn the Key Lessons, Your Key to Success in Clicker Training.

If you know me, you know I am a huge fan of celebrating successes. I know this year my blog will hit the 100.000 views! Something I didn’t foresee when I started. Time to celebrate! With you! This is how: I will give away a 30 minute coaching session ($35 value) or a ticket to participate in my HippoLogic Clicker Challenge ($47 value).

Why I started blogging

I started this blog as an online (accountability) training journal to tell my friends and family (and maybe a few strangers) about Kyra’s training.

She was 11 months old en just caught out of the wild (a nature reserve in The Netherlands). She didn’t want to deal with people, she was super scared for everything and only ate hay. No carrots, apple, sugar cubes of horse treats. Quite a challenge to start with positive reinforcement.

After 3 weeks of daily training (twice a day in the first week) I could approach (a BIG deal!), halter her, touch her all over, lead her over the premises (only if other horses stayed in eye sight, but it was a start), lift her feet and even disinfect the wound on her leg with a spray can. Every month I put a summary on my blog to list our achievements.

Kyra was my first horse that I made clear goals for (taming her was my #1 goal). It is because I wrote down my goals, discussed them with my best friend, my accountability partner. I also kept track of how I trained behaviours and kept a logbook so I could reproduce my results. This all lead to developing HippoLogic’s Key Lessons, Your Keys to Success in Positive Reinforcement training program. I wanted to develop an easy to follow step-by-step program for horse lovers who want to implement clicker training.

Becoming a blogger was an important step in this whole process. I want to celebrate this with you: my readers and loyal followers of my blog!

2012 the year of many changes

In 2012 we (my husband, our 1 year old son, our 2 cats and Kyra) emigrated to Canada. I changed from working mom to stay-at-home mom without a social network in my personal life or in my horse world. I left all my friends, family and horse riding clients behind and I really missed them.

I struggled, I had happy times, felt lonely, was home sick, was happy again. I felt it all! Then, in 2014, I decided to restart my blog, so I had something to do besides being a mom. I missed teaching riding lessons and helping equestrians so much!

In October 2014 I wrote my first blog in English. I posted 9 articles that year. Yes, that is how I started. Now I publish about 100 each year.

Time to Celebrate!

In order to celebrate my upcoming 100.000st view I decided to give away a 30 minute coaching session ($35 value) or a ticket to participate in my HippoLogic Clicker Challenge ($47 value).

Sandra Poppema, B.Sc.

I improve the human-horse relationships by reconnecting you with your inner wisdom and teach you the principles of learning and motivation, so you become confident and knowledgeable to train your horse in an effective and FUN way. Win-win for horse and human.

All my programs are focused on building your confidence and provide you with a detailed step-by-step formula to train horses with 100% positive reinforcement.